3D printing mathematics

When learning about existing mathematics, and especially when trying
to produce new mathematics, we spend a lot of time thinking about
examples. How do parts of the example interact with each other? What
are the regularities and symmetries? Does it come in a family of
examples, or does it live on its own? In many cases, the first thing
to do is to try and draw a picture. We are both geometric topologists,
working mostly with two and three-dimensional objects. As such, two-dimensional pictures are important currency in our field. These
pictures are typically drawn on blackboards, on pieces of paper, and
even on tablecloths and napkins, as famously depicted in Douglas
Adams' discussion of Bistromathics.

A natural extension of drawing in two dimensions is drawing in three
dimensions. In this direction, we have been using 3D printing as an
aid to visualising mathematical objects. We design sculptures that
help us and others to understand the mathematics better. Also, these
sculptures are beautiful in their own right!

Here are a few favourite examples.

Half of a 120-cell

Half of a 120-cell depicts a projection of the 120-cell, one of the
four-dimensional regular polytopes (from the Greek — "poly" for many,
"topos" for place).

Figure 1: Half of a 120-cell, with
views showing the 2-, 3- and 5-fold symmetries.

The familiar pentagon is a
two-dimensional polytope having five facets, all of which are edges.
The dodecahedron is a three-dimensional polytope having 12 pentagonal
facets. Finally the 120-cell is a four-dimensional polytope having 120
dodecahedral facets. In each case the facets are polytopes of one
dimension lower.

To understand how to project this four-dimensional object into
three-dimensional space, we need to develop some intuition from lower
dimensions.

In dimension two the corners of a square sit on a circle which
contains the whole shape. If we place a light at the center of the
circle, the edges of the square cast shadows on the circle.

In dimension three, a cube sits inside a sphere. We arrange the cube
so that one of its square facets is horizontal, with the North pole
directly above the facet's center. Now we place a light at the centre
of the sphere. The edges of the cube cast shadows onto the sphere,
making a "beach ball cube". We delete the cube, and concentrate on
the beach ball version. Move the light to the North pole. The edges of
the beach ball cube cast their shadows on the horizontal plane: the
plane the sphere is sitting on. This last step is called stereographic projection, from the sphere to the plane. See figure 3 below for pictures of this process.

Figure 3: Projecting a cube onto the plane.

Finally, in dimension four, the 120-cell sits inside a three-sphere
(the unit sphere in four-dimensional space). By casting shadows out
from the center of the three-sphere we make a "beach ball 120-cell".
We use stereographic projection to get the beach ball 120-cell into
our ordinary three-dimensional space. This gives the rightmost image in figure 2.

Note the massive complexity near the center. This cannot be printed
using current technology — at least not within our budget! We came
up with the following idea: we cut the projection of the 120-cell in half along a
sphere, and we threw away the outside. The result is shown in figure 1. You can find out more in this movie:

The internal structure is now visible. In addition, the ratio between
the diameter and the smallest features is much more reasonable, making
the sculpture printable.

Quintessence

After playing with Half of a 120-cell for quite a while, we
were inspired to design a family of interlocking puzzles which we call
Quintessence; here chains of dodecahedra living in the Half of a
120-cell are combined to build various structures.

Figure 4: Quintessence; copies of the six "rib" pieces shown in the top left
can make all of these puzzles.

See how the puzzles work in this movie:

Figure 5: The reverse of a two pound coin.

Triple helix

Triple Helix (figure 6) is a mechanism with three helical gears, meshing in
pairs, all at right angles to each other. There is an amusing mistake
in graphic design, where three (or any odd number) of planar gears are
arranged in a circle. Perhaps the best known example is the reverse
of the two-pound coin (see figure 5), designed by Bruce Rushin, which shows 19 gears
that symbolise the Industrial Revolution. The mistake comes from the fact that neighbouring gears must rotate in
opposite directions. Thus any circle with an odd number of planar
gears is frozen! Triple helix is one solution to this paradox.

Round Möbius strip

Round Möbius strip answers another puzzle — it is a Möbius strip
with a circular boundary! Famously, the Möbius strip can be made by
taking a long strip of paper, giving it a half-twist (twist by 180
degrees), and gluing the two short edges together (see thisPlus article for more information). The resulting
object has a single edge and one side. Unlike an ordinary piece of
paper, you do not need to cross an edge to get from one side to the
other side. The boundary of the paper Möbius strip describes a
curve in space; this curve is not geometrically a circle, but it can
be deformed into one. This movie illustrates the idea:

Our sculpture shows what happens when you drag
the surface of the Möbius strip along as you "straighten out" the
circle. We have also dragged one point of the strip to infinity to
bring out the symmetries of the Möbius strip, but you can see the
round circle at the centre — this is the boundary of the original
Möbius strip.

Figure 8: The "round" Möbius strip.

3D printing

3D printing is a term that covers a number of closely related
technologies, also known as additive manufacturing. In all of these
the idea is to build a physical object up, layer by layer, starting
from nothing. This contrasts with more traditional subtractive
manufacturing, such as lathing or carving. Complicated internal
structures are difficult to make in subtractive manufacturing, but are
easy in additive manufacturing. When subtracting, the object can get
in the way of the carving tool. When adding, the print head always
works from above, and at each moment the printed layers are below.
Intricate details are now just a matter of persistence on the part of
the designer; at the manufacturing stage it is as easy to print a
block as it is to print a delicate filigree occupying the same volume.

The printing process is almost entirely automated, which means that
the printed object very closely approximates the computer design. For
us, this means that our prints are very close to the mathematical
ideal. Many of our sculptures are entirely or almost entirely
generated by (Python) code that directly expresses the desired
geometry. Thus the mathematics described by our programs gets
translated into physical objects with very few choices or
possibilities of error.

However, there are limits to what 3D printers can do. There is a
basic tension between the minimum feature size and the overall size of
a sculpture. As we learned from the 120-cell, if some features are too
small then the sculpture will have parts that are fragile or perhaps
just unprintable. The easiest solution to this problem is to scale the
design up -- however if the resulting volume is too large the
sculpture will be too expensive and perhaps again unprintable (if it
does not fit inside the printer).

Getting into 3D printing is becoming easier and easier. These days
many schools and universities, and even hobbyists have 3D printers.
There are also many 3D printing services that let you upload a model,
which they then 3D print and send to you. In addition one of us
(Segerman) has given a workshop on 3D printing, using the programs
Mathematica and Rhinoceros. The workshop materials are available here.

Ideas for the future

We are currently thinking about objects that move, or that can be
taken apart and played with. Such sculptures play to the strengths of
physical objects as opposed to pictures or even computer animations.
As an example of cool stuff that wants to be 3D printed we mention
planar linkages — a fascinating piece of engineering along these
lines is the Chaos machine of Robert MacKay. We are also thinking of
sculptures based on hyperbolic rather than spherical geometry, and
about the favourite knot of hyperbolic geometers, the figure-eight knot.

About the authors

Saul Schleimer is a geometric topologist, working at the University of
Warwick. His other interests include combinatorial group theory and
computation. He is especially interested in the interplay between
these fields and additionally in visualisation of ideas from these
fields.

Henry Segerman is an assistant professor in the Department of
Mathematics at Oklahoma State University. His mathematical research is
in 3-dimensional geometry and topology. He also makes mathematical
artwork, often about geometry and topology, but also involving
procedural generation, self-reference, ambigrams and puzzles.